PYTHIA
1,591 Years Before the Final Exodus
"No, no, no," Ino said, walking around the desk and plopping back on the sofa.
"I don't understand what you want!" Pythia yelled. "I've been listening and writing for hours on end. About the Twelve Nations. The Thirteenth Tribe." She scoffed. "The Thirteenth Tribe. You blathered on for a while and I don't feel like you told me anything substantive. I mean, what does the Thirteenth Tribe have to do with the gods?"
Ino smirked, "You'd be surprised."
She ignored him and kept talking, "The Flood. Kobollian Utopia. I write down a few lines and you rant for no good reason!"
Ino rolled his eyes and thrust his open hand forward, stopping it quickly, "You just don't understand. One would think you had never read the Sacred Scrolls before."
"I have read them," Pythia said as she laid her head on the table.
"And are you certain you don't want to write this down on something better than crumpled papers?" Ino was looking over the oracle's shoulder. "Like parchment or a scroll or something?"
Pythia shook her head. "I can transcribe everything later. And a scroll is a bit presumptuous, don't you think?" She turned in her chair to look at her ex-fiancé. "Will you let me write?" Ino was always pushy. That time she left the Temple to run off with him? It was his idea and he was pushy then, too. He was no match for her parents or the elder oracles, though.
The finger in her mind was still there. The chamalla was wearing thin and the finger began to fade, but she still sensed it. The finger pointed at Ino. The finger was Ino.
"You're not writing like you've read the Scrolls. Where's the flair? The flowery language?" he said.
Pythia scoffed and looked at her desktop again, "I'm taking notes. I'll make it read pretty later!"
"There's more to writing this tripe than just putting down the facts." Ino stood again and paced toward the door. "By making it pop off the page, you add an air of irresistible poetry to it. And," he leaned on the desk, "it makes it more vague and therefore more open to interpretation."
Pythia looked up and asked softly, "Why is that a good thing?"
Ino shook his head and sat on the edge of the desk. "I'll explain prophecy later. Let's go back to your writing style for a moment."
"Ugh."
"For example, we know the Thirteenth Tribe went by the Lion's Head Nebula, right?"
"How should I know? That's what you said," Pythia mumbled.
"What did you write down for the Tribe's journey through the nebula?"
Pythia flipped through a couple of crumpled papers and found one. She slowly read the scribble with an audible murmur. "Um … 'The fleet passed by the Lion's Head Nebula on their journey to Earth.'"
"No, no." Ino held his hands aloft and looked at the ceiling, "It needs to be something like, 'The fleet was watched over by a great lion,' … there are pulsars in that nebula?"
"Again," she said, exasperated, "that's what you told me."
Ino nodded, "Here, 'The fleet was watched over by a great lion with a mighty blinking eye.' See?"
"Or," Pythia began, "instead of 'fleet,' how about, 'Caravan of the Heavens?'"
Ino slapped the papers, "You've got it!" Pythia began to rifle through the pages but Ino began to wave his hands, "Look, I can't stay here long enough for you to doll up every line. You can do that later."
"Didn't I just say that?"
Ino stood from the desk and walked back to the chair. "There is so much other ground to cover …"
Pythia tilted her head and rubbed her neck, "I feel like there's a huge piece of the puzzle we haven't gotten to yet. The real beginning."
Ino shook his head, "Maybe you don't need to know."
Pythia paused her self-massage. "What?"
"Other people have written about the … 'Lords' and 'Titans' ..."
At those words, the finger twitched. It made Pythia jump. Her mind ebbed and her head lolled back. She knew this was important. Did she feel the mind-finger when she had her visions as a child? She couldn't remember. But it was here now and it meant something.
"You know more than those stories," she said, "and no one really believes all of them anyway." Pythia wiped sweat from her brow. "Come on. You have to tell me."
Ino shook his head. "I'm not supposed to."
"What about my natural curiosity?" she pleaded. Pythia scratched her arms absent mindedly, a side effect of the chamalla.
Ino sighed, "No, I don't think you need to know."
END OF BOOK ONE